Inflation in 1972 was fairly low, 3.4%. In 1974, inflation had jumped all the way to 12.3%. Hmmm... what major geopolitical event, with significant economic repercussions, occured in 1973? How about the Yom Kippur War, the U.S. military aid intervention on Israel's side, and the subsequent Gulf Arab oil embargo?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis
> "By the end of the embargo in March 1974, the price of oil had risen nearly 300%, from US$3 per barrel to nearly $12 per barrel globally; US prices were significantly higher. The embargo caused an oil crisis, or "shock", with many short- and long-term effects on global politics and the global economy. It was later called the "first oil shock", followed by the 1979 oil crisis, termed the "second oil shock"."
The 1979 oil shock was caused by the steep drop in oil production in Iran, and was only partially mitigated by the petrodollar recycling system that US and Britain had set up with the Gulf Arab states in the latter half of the 1970s (initiated under President Ford's administration). It was later offset by the deepwater oil boom, in the North Sea and Gulf of Mexico, as well as by falling demand to the rise of more energy-efficint vehicles and energy-saving initiatives:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980s_oil_glut
By 1983, the inflation rate was back to 3.2%, which seems to match the notion that energy prices were the dominant inflationary factor over the 1972-1985 period.
It's curious that the author of this piece entirely neglects this fundamental dynamic, instead claiming that it was due to a push for full employment (which is something of a neoliberal trope, i.e. it's an argument in favor of decreasing domestic US employment by shifting manufacturing overseas to sweatshop zones).
Just look at the US unemployment rate - it dropped from 10.8% in 1982 (3.8% inflation) to 6.6% in 1986 (1.1% inflation).. i.e. Inflation plunged while employment boomed... doesn't that completely upset that argument?
https://www.thebalancemoney.com/unemployment-rate-by-year-33...